Thicker Than Water
by SocialSuicide
Summary: One Shot. Cheaper by the Dozen We never found out what happened to the bullies that made fun of Charlie and Lorain. This is what I would have done. Also what happened after. Read and Review.


Disclaimer: Okay, I just saw it, it's fresh in my mind, so I'm going to work on it. Do not own.  
  
Thicker Than Water.  
  
When the van pulled up, there was a snicker or two from the crowd of jocks and cheerleaders. The hicks from cow-town were all here.  
  
Minus the parents, of course.  
  
Charlie was the first out, and he walked around to the passenger side door, opening it to reveal his little sister, Lorain. She climbed out, with the help of her older brother, who smiled at her. She was fashionable as always, and today was wearing paint splattered overalls and a pink tee- shirt. She wore a matching bandana. She smiled at her brother.  
  
By now the cheerleaders were laughing their short skirts off, not a hard task to do, as they were barely on anyway. Lorain's perfectly glossed lips tightened, and Charlie laid a restraining hand on her shoulder, muttering about how she always kept her cool, now was not a good time to lose it.  
  
And then he opened the sliding door.  
  
Out filed ten kids, ranging from the ages of nine to thirteen. The entire group of bullies and girlfriends broke into hysterical laughter, and they continued to, even as Sarah pulled out and passed around various sports equipment. They were quite a sight, with hockey sticks, tennis rackets, baseball bats, golf clubs, and one frog catching net.  
  
The lead bully stopped laughing long enough to sputter, "Look, it's Team Retard from Hicksville USA!" and fell into hysterical giggles again. Charlie looked at Lorain and then glanced around the empty parking lot. He took a deep breath.  
  
"Okay, gang, no broken bones, Sarah that means you." There was a groan from the mentioned child. "Mark, you're look out. Girls are off limits to the guys unless they hit you first, stay close to the car in case we need to make a quick getaway." he said, and the gathering of highly placed students stopped laughing, wiping the tears from their eyes as they stared at the group of kids in confusion.  
  
Charlie kept going.  
  
"Mom, Dad, and Nora can't know, so nobody get hurt to consistently, so that we can claim you fell down the stairs. Jessica, Kim, you guys and I are in charge of making sure no one gets away. Feel free to bite and scratch."  
  
He turned to look at the stunned group of pushy jocks and preppy girls who really needed a breath mint or three to hide the smell of cigarette smoke.  
  
"Go."  
  
Later, in the Hospital, when Lorain was getting her shoulder relocated and her black eye looked at, Jessica and Kim were having their wrist casts put on, Sarah's forehead was being probed for rushing fluid, and the Nigel and Kyle were getting their nose splints applied, Charlie, Henry, Mark, Jake and Mike tried to look their parents in the eyes as they were lectured on the proper uses of teamwork.  
  
As it was, the only real fatalities were the baseball bats and the hockey sticks (because the tennis rackets were aluminum, the golf clubs were steel, and Mark didn't actually use his frog catching net) and the bullies car, which would be in the body shop for a while.  
  
Luckily, no one was pressing charges, because they had been told time and again that their kids were going to end up in some sort of trouble. This was the icing on the cake for some.  
  
For one day afterwards, nobody could stop talking about it. They wanted to hear it multiple times, to the point where everyone was sick of telling it. Lorain was tired of admirers trying to catch a look at her black eye.  
  
After that, no one let the bullies push them around any more. They got friends, and they stood up for themselves. After two years of breaking down the barriers, everyone knew everyone, and were no longer enemies.  
  
Nora eventually found Mister Right-For-Her, and they settled down in the neighborhood so that they could be near her family. They also had twelve kids. Ruth, Jade, Brett, Noah, Luke, Jesse, James, Samantha, Stevie, Steven, John, and Billy-Jo.  
  
Charlie graduated in the top fifty of his class, and married Beth, starting his own family of six.  
  
Lorain found a boyfriend in the yearbook club who hated conformists, and put herself on the twelve step program to tone down on the fashion. They dated for thirteen months before he broke her heart and she became a bitter young woman. Two years after that, she moved into the big city where she found true love with a clerk at the city librarian.  
  
Sarah managed to keep her grades up and joined the football team, where she finally found her calling. Here was a place where she could be as violent as she wanted and only get fouls. She stayed on whatever team her father coached. She stayed with her parents until she got married to the quarterback. They raised three sports fans and one writer.  
  
Henry grew up to become a member of a jazz band with his three best friends, Alex, George, Manuel, and his girlfriend, Grace, who played the trumpet.  
  
Jake went into the music business, making millions of dollars on the many genres he wrote for. All of his songs were about the joys of a dysfunctional family.  
  
Mark became a reptile specialist, and won the Nobel prize for discovering a new species of Frog that he named 'Melanie', after his girlfriend and eventually wife. They had one daughter, who was every much a geek as he had been.  
  
Jessica, Kim, and Mike were perfectly happy to live life off of the television screen and out of the magazine pages, and while they did occasionally show up for the benefit of their siblings, they mostly just ran a day-care, a fair day organization, and a professional birthday service with Dylan, who had moved out of his house legally at sixteen and in with them. He eventually married Jessica and they had three beautiful, red-headed children, whom they named Thomas, Kimberly, and Katie.  
  
Nigel and Kyle never separated. They were together for almost their entire life, until Kyle's tragic death at the age of twenty-seven. Nigel never recovered, and went to live with his parents until his own, depression induced coma three years later. After two months of hoping, the family made a decision to end his suffering and take him off life support.  
  
Throughout their life the Bakers kept in touch. After all, blood is thicker than water. 


End file.
